Thus closes my notes for the month of December and also for the year just passed and gone and now numbered with the things that were. Whether the Almighty will spare me to chronicle the daily events of the incoming year is more than I know but trusting in Him I shall enter upon the pleasing task, which is useful as a reference and may be profitable to those who have an interest in me.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

DAILY GAZETTE & COMET [BATON ROUGE, LA], April 18, 1860, p. 2, c. 2. In Crocket, Texas, recently, Mr. T. P. Collins, a merchant of that place, published a scandalous piece of poetry about a Miss Whitwell, a school mistress. She sued him for $6000 damages, and gained the case. The jury returned the verdict at midnight. So strong was public sentiment in favor of the plaintiff, that the verdict was received with shouts of the people, the firing of guns and other demonstrations of gladness.

Sesquicentennial

In the year 1860, James Madison Hall sat down to pen a few lines in a journal, and thus began a project that would continue on an almost daily basis until his death almost 7 years later. On the 150th anniversary of the beginning of that journey -- 16th January 2010 -- J.M. Hall's writings began appearing on this blog on a (hopefully) daily basis.